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Sun, 04 Feb 2018 04:38:46 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.4Things Sales Managers Should Never Say to Their Repshttp://www.mo-data.com/things-sales-managers-never-say-reps/
http://www.mo-data.com/things-sales-managers-never-say-reps/#respondMon, 11 Dec 2017 21:00:26 +0000http://www.mo-data.com/?p=3665Different sales leaders have different management styles to lead their team and achieve their revenue goals. However, no matter what type of manager you are, there are certain things you should never say to your sales reps. Here are nine phrases that are easy to slip of the tongue but can be incredibly demotivating for … Continue reading Things Sales Managers Should Never Say to Their Reps→

]]>Different sales leaders have different management styles to lead their team and achieve their revenue goals. However, no matter what type of manager you are, there are certain things you should never say to your sales reps.

Here are nine phrases that are easy to slip of the tongue but can be incredibly demotivating for your sales team members.

1) “What were you doing all this while?”
As a sales manager, don’t act like a dictator or a school teacher who goes around keeping account of every minute spent by sales reps. There are softwares and dashboards through which you can get an insight into how sales reps are utilizing their time, without being direct and unpleasant.

2) “That’s not my job!”
Sometimes sales reps will need you to intervene while interacting with decision-makers on the buying side or even to solve issues within the team. Turning down the subordinate’s request to solve the problem gives an impression to the team that you are not familiar with your job responsibilities.

3) “I can’t spoonfeed you every time.”Sales manager’s foremost responsibility is to coach the sales reps. While there is a difference between mentoring and spoonfeeding, a good sales manager is expected to be supportive in every way. If you say something similar to the reps who need help then you are closing windows to engage in a healthy and open dialogue with the team.

4) “When I was a sales rep, I was closing deals faster than you.”
That is not a motivating phrase! Because of your position you are already a shining example and a role model. There is no point in bragging about how much you’ve done in the past. Instead of bragging help your sales reps know that you are there to inspire them with your abundant experience.

5) “Don’t give me excuses!”
They might not be complaining. They might be presenting their side of the story. Their perspective. As a sales leader, you are expected to be a good listener, a person your sales reps can look up to. Don’t be blunt. Listen, think and give a solution- that’s what great sales managers do.

6) “Marketing is a separate entity.”
How can marketing be a different department when they share the same goal as you of driving growth and revenue. As a sales manager, please be clear that you can help your team reach the target if they work unanimously with the marketing department.

7) “Your job is to sell and not to give ideas.”
Your sales reps are the ones who are interacting with the prospects on a regular basis and they know the loopholes in your sales process. They know why the deals are not moving. You have to listen to them if you want to fix glitches in your process. Just closing the door and having complacency doesn’t help you and your organization.

8) “You need to learn a lot from Miss/Mr. ABC.”
No one likes to be compared to somebody else. Remember, as a kid, how many times you were asked “Why can’t you be more like [name]?” And now, remember how you felt about it. Were you motivated? Did you change your behaviour? My guess to both is NO. So, don’t do that to your salespeople. Instead, have a mentorship program in place if you think that sales reps need to learn from seniors or performers.
9) “If you don’t show improvement, I will have to let you go.”
Do not just criticize. Always do your research and support your input with data. Give reasons why you think the person in question is not improving. Have one-on-one meetings, review and give a chance to the sales rep to clarify. A successful sales leader must be sure he/she has provided all needed, including trainings, tools and time, to their underperforming reps before letting someone to go.

As a good sales manager, it’s your duty to help, guide and coach your sales reps. Give them a chance to improve and prove. And, If you still see no progress, you can always turn to the HR department for help.

]]>http://www.mo-data.com/things-sales-managers-never-say-reps/feed/0Important Sales Manager Roles and Responsibilitieshttp://www.mo-data.com/sales-manager-roles-responsibilities/
http://www.mo-data.com/sales-manager-roles-responsibilities/#respondWed, 06 Dec 2017 21:39:50 +0000http://www.mo-data.com/?p=3659Sales managers are a key part of any organization. Their decisions and actions are crucial for achieving the sales targets and driving revenue. Therefore, a successful sales manager have three important roles to play: As a team coach. As a customer relationship manager. As a business leader. All these roles bring and a number of … Continue reading Important Sales Manager Roles and Responsibilities→

]]>Sales managers are a key part of any organization. Their decisions and actions are crucial for achieving the sales targets and driving revenue. Therefore, a successful sales manager have three important roles to play:

As a team coach.

As a customer relationship manager.

As a business leader.

All these roles bring and a number of responsibilities with themselves. Here, we’ve outlined the most common responsibilities of a sales manager in a B2B organization with account based selling model. However, they can be applied to most sales managers as well.

Top 5 Responsibilities of a Sales Manager

1) To select and prioritize targets

Helping the team identify and prioritize the right target is one of the topmost sales managers’ duties in B2B selling.

A sales manager need to be on top of the game to know if the right decision makers are being approached in each prospect’s business. They should be well-aware of the market and company’s potential clients, so they can point the sales team to the best opportunities.

2) To maintain a relationship with other departments

Good sales leaders maintain a rapport not only with the sales team but with other departments as well. This is where they need to proactively use their leadership skills to foster communication between the different departments in order to ensure a smooth workflow. In ABS/ABM model, a collaboration between the marketing and sales department is a must.

3) Setting data-driven sales targets

Sales managers are responsible for making accurate sales forecasts and setting sales targets, for which they need a trusted source of data. Fortunately, there are a wide variety of AI sales tools that provide a great deal of insights to help with that. However, each sales manager should decide which tools will serve best to him and his team.

4) To nurture the sales team

Sales managers should exhibit good team building skills. Good sales managers don’t put pressure on the team rather they make them feel accountable by motivating them. They don’t look at the conversion rate alone to assess the effectiveness of their team.

Sales managers cultivate a fruitful relationship with the decision makers in various accounts through their excellent communication skills. They also develop the sales strategy to bring back lost accounts.

An ideal sales manager investigates and solves customers’ complex problems that have been passed on by the team members.

Gone are the days where sales managers were expected to give pep talks and urge the reps to ‘somehow’ sell more. Today, sales managers are expected to coach and guide the sales team, work with the senior management and other departments in pursuing the company’s goals, and foster customer engagement.

]]>http://www.mo-data.com/sales-manager-roles-responsibilities/feed/0How Sales Managers Can Optimize Their Time to Become More Efficienthttp://www.mo-data.com/how-sales-managers-can-optimize-time/
http://www.mo-data.com/how-sales-managers-can-optimize-time/#respondWed, 15 Nov 2017 13:34:22 +0000http://www.mo-data.com/?p=3644The complex nature of B2B sales structure demands Sales Managers to accomplish myriads of tasks. These tasks involve everything between coaching the team to managing customer relationships. There is perpetual pressure on the team and sales managers to win and maintain large value accounts for the organization without wasting time. How do successful sales managers … Continue reading How Sales Managers Can Optimize Their Time to Become More Efficient→

]]>The complex nature of B2B sales structure demands Sales Managers to accomplish myriads of tasks. These tasks involve everything between coaching the team to managing customer relationships. There is perpetual pressure on the team and sales managers to win and maintain large value accounts for the organization without wasting time.

How do successful sales managers allocate their time?

According to Willis Towers Watson report, a successful sales manager spends 14% more time per year in selling activities. Apart from that “managers will spend time with lower-performing sales reps to provide extra coaching and guidance, while spending more time with better-performing members on other activities such as co-selling or performance reinforcement”

By optimizing your time, as a senior sales manager, you can achieve:

Streamlined sales process where leads get handled faster

More time to coach and train your staff

Time to filter and focus on high-value targets

Use of cleaner data and information for smarter and faster decision making

Time to help your team prepare for a demo, first appointment, personalized marketing content etc.

And of course, all these together lead towards better revenue!

How to optimize your time as a sales manager

1) Streamline administrative and non-revenue generating tasks

A sales manager’s principal role is to train the salespeople so that they could reach the goal. If most of your time is spent on doing administrative tasks then you need to revisit your and your organization’s priorities. You could be asked to track and report daily sales figures and provide revenue data to the CEO as and when required. In that case, don’t hold back from implementing or using tools and dashboards for non-revenue generating activities such as pulling out data and reports. Most of the times the number of reports that get generated and published doesn’t even get opened.

After all, as a sales manager, your primary focus should be to guide your team in sales strategies for acquiring new clients!

2) Keep track of time to optimize it

Start by evaluating all the meetings that you attend to ensure that next time you go to the effective ones. As a senior sales manager, you are entrusted with the task of achieving sustained sales volume, which needs elimination of distractions around you. Get an overview of where your sales team is spending time and what are the stalled deals. Such continuous evaluation will help you focus straightaway on valuable activities.

Sales managers get back time to spend on sales management activities such as resource planning, coaching, recruiting, interacting with the team members and stakeholders.

3) Utilize data to manage your time

Allow data to show you the entire picture of your sales pipeline so that you with your team can focus on formulating strategies to acquire high-valued accounts. Nothing can give you better impact than having data-driven predictions and sales forecasts.

Data will help you manage resources and time allocation adequately to ensure timelines and key milestones are met!

]]>http://www.mo-data.com/how-sales-managers-can-optimize-time/feed/04 KPIs that Every Sales Manager Should Usehttp://www.mo-data.com/sales-manager-kpis/
http://www.mo-data.com/sales-manager-kpis/#respondWed, 08 Nov 2017 15:39:42 +0000http://www.mo-data.com/?p=3637Identifying the right sales metrics to track is crucial for any sales manager who wants to achieve their goals. Here are the top four B2B sales metrics, according to us, that you should be tracking on a regular basis to attain sales growth.

Identifying the right sales metrics to track is crucial for any sales manager who wants to achieve their goals. Here are the top four B2B sales metrics, according to us, that you should be tracking on a regular basis to attain sales growth.

Right vs. Wrong Sales Metrics

Tracking right KPIs for sales help you in making smarter and faster decisions. In succession, you will be investing in sophisticated sales tools to process large quantities of information. If you are tracking right sales metrics you are helping your organization in minimizing wastage of resources, instantly driving better results.

List of Sales KPIs

Here is the list of crucial sales KPIs that you should be focusing on:

1) Track ‘conversations’ and ‘activities’ to make an impact

Of course, the end goal is the conversion but tracking conversion alone will give you a partial picture of the performance of your team. Great sales managers spend substantial time in coaching and guiding their team. It can be achieved at the initial stage in sales pipeline by following basic things such as a number of conversations. This falls under the purview of ‘Activity Tracking’.

Tracking how many conversations are actually taking place between your team and the prospects will help you evaluate if your sales team is going after the right opportunities or not.

2) Speed to get the first appointment with decision makers

As soon as the prospects get identified, validated and qualified they need to be contacted without further delay otherwise your team might end up losing an opportunity to your competitor. This is an important metric that often gets neglected.

The speed to get an appointment for the demo will help you know how efficient your sales executives are.

3) Customer engagement score

If you measure customer engagement you are most likely to identify customers who are ready for upselling and cross-sell. Also, it will let you know how the existing customers are interacting with your product/ service. This enables you to understand the pain point of customers and what needs to be improved in terms of product offering.

Your customer engagement score is tracked based on the product usage. A higher score is directly proportional to a happy and satisfied customer.

4) Quotations generated and closing rate

How many quotations your sales executives generate after face to face interaction with decision makers on the buyer side? How many customers need to be acquired so that your team hits the sales target?

You need to look at historical data to determine what your sales executives have to do on daily/ weekly basis in order to achieve organization’s objectives. Through historical data, you get an overview of what you did in the past. For best result, historical data has to be combined with current trends to make estimates for the future.

]]>http://www.mo-data.com/sales-manager-kpis/feed/0How to Improve Sales Productivityhttp://www.mo-data.com/improve-sales-productivity/
http://www.mo-data.com/improve-sales-productivity/#respondWed, 01 Nov 2017 16:11:24 +0000http://www.mo-data.com/?p=3472As a sales leader in B2B organization, your top priority should be to improve sales productivity. Minimize the usage of resources and maximize the revenue. Well, in theory it sounds conflicting because at times you might have felt the need to expend more on your resources to get bigger deals into the sales funnel. However, … Continue reading How to Improve Sales Productivity→

]]>As a sales leader in B2B organization, your top priority should be to improve sales productivity. Minimize the usage of resources and maximize the revenue. Well, in theory it sounds conflicting because at times you might have felt the need to expend more on your resources to get bigger deals into the sales funnel. However, in reality you don’t have to splurge and stretch your budget, if you fix few things along the sales cycle.

So, here is how you can improve your sales productivity:

1) Find the roadblocks

How much time each rep invests in selling? How many meetings do they attend? Are all meetings important for all the reps to attend? How many inbound calls get missed and why? Are there easy and cheap tools available to substitute for manual admin work?

After you get answer to these questions and other questions that follow, you will know how to allocate sales reps and their time. Hence, work on assessing the sales process to remove the roadblocks.

2) Align sales and marketing teams

Who updates the marketing materials and personalizes the email content?

That’s not the job of your sales reps if marketing team exists in your organization. Let the sales reps brief the marketing about the needs and requirements of the prospects. Based on this feedback marketing will know what kind of content would be appropriate for a particular sales rep’s needs. This is one area you can work on with your sales and marketing departments to improve productivity. Edited and updated content will have powerful impact by getting strong, qualified and filtered leads for the sales reps.

3) Invest in right CRM tools

How many times sales reps have interacted with particular prospects? Or with various stakeholders in that account? How long was the sales cycle? What is history of the customer? Why did a customer leave? What were the various interactions?

Obviously, a sales rep will not remember every detail and every piece of history associated with a prospect- lost or won. So, investing in CRM is the right thing to do as it cuts down on manual and admin work. Besides you have access to historical data at any given point of time. Implementing CRM and CRM training for your sales reps are one time job. There are plethora of CRM tools in the market, most of which are web based and can be accessed from anywhere.

4) Invest in training your sales reps

Do you listen to the recorded conversation between your sales reps and prospects?

If not, start doing it. This is an effective way to train and give feedback to your subordinates. However, don’t overtrain or waste too much time in training.

5) Use data to get sales insights

How do you gauge the interest of your prospect? How does your sales reps prioritize their leads? When is the right time to call or mail them? How do you know if the stakeholder on other side has read your mail or not?

Data has answer to all these questions. Use of data saves you from doing guess work and takes your business to new heights.

]]>http://www.mo-data.com/improve-sales-productivity/feed/0How to Improve Sales Efficiencyhttp://www.mo-data.com/improve-sales-efficiency/
http://www.mo-data.com/improve-sales-efficiency/#respondWed, 25 Oct 2017 15:58:22 +0000http://www.mo-data.com/?p=3469Sales Efficiency is about hitting the projected bottom line with optimal usage of resources. Optimal resources could be minimal effort, less number of sales reps in your team, less number of hours and shorter sales cycles. But all of these should yield better growth and revenue! Well, we are not talking about an imaginary situation … Continue reading How to Improve Sales Efficiency→

]]>Sales Efficiency is about hitting the projected bottom line with optimal usage of resources. Optimal resources could be minimal effort, less number of sales reps in your team, less number of hours and shorter sales cycles. But all of these should yield better growth and revenue!

Well, we are not talking about an imaginary situation when we say that the above mentioned scenario is achievable. Many sales organizations across industries, handling B2B deals, have secured good results by fixing some loopholes in their sales process. Here is what you can do to improve your sales efficiency:

1.) Work on tightening up your sales process

The best way to do this is by engaging your sales reps and by getting feedback from their experiences. Remember that they are the ones who know what works and what doesn’t. So, their feedback in improving the sales process and in eliminating the redundant steps can improve the performance and efficiency.

2.) Retain the best sales reps

As a sales leader your job is to identify the best reps in your team. Give them incentives, promote them so that they grow with your organization and vice versa. You don’t want them to switch companies because if they go, they take the contacts they have made in your industry with them. Apart from this, in case of Account Based Selling model you need highly skilled managers to consistently improve relationships with your existing customers. Hence, if the attrition rate is high in your sales team you might end up losing the customer and also unwantedly invest time in training the new member/s.

3) Use technology and data

We all know that sales reps can spend considerable time in entering data if you haven’t yet implemented CRM or other automated tools. Data entry and other admin work shouldn’t come under sales execs scope. For this it is always recommended to use CRM and other sales enablement tools. This not only assists your team in achieving the tasks efficiently but also gives an insight on sales cycle, goals, strategies etc.

4) Build the sales team brick by brick

In case of Account Based Sales (ABS) you need lot of resources and effort from every individual in your team to acquire one customer. These individuals are sales people in your team at various echelons such as Account Managers, Sales Development Reps (SDRs) and Sales Executives. Every individual and every hour spent by them count towards the ROI. So, it is better to decide if you need an extensive sales team or just few individuals can wear different hats. Later based on the needs you can always expand the size.

5) Value your team’s existence

Ensure that your sales team understands its value. Often times sales team gets ignored. Organizational leaders tend to give more importance to product and marketing teams. As a sales leader your job is to make the organization value its sales team. Make your team members feel that they are the central point, entrusted with the most difficult task in the organization.

6) Training and feedback loop

Don’t ignore on-job training and feedback. It’s not waste of time! Before you give feedback to each team member, get them to give feedback to themselves. This is much faster than you giving feedback to everyone. Bring them under one roof and ask them to share their experiences in selling. Also, let them get ideas from each other on how they can handle their current prospects.

7) Emphasize on thorough research

Let the sales reps do thorough research on their prospect’s needs, requirements, history etc. Half baked knowledge doesn’t lead anywhere but towards panic, frustration and loss of time plus revenue. Before the sales reps talk to the prospects they need to map their need to the features of your products/ services. This saves time. An outstanding well prepared pitch delivers a powerful impression on the prospect’s psych. Yes, let the awesome customer journey start from the very first touch-point!

8) Let marketing and sales work in tandem

For the previous point to land as targeted, it is extremely important that your marketing team is used as a tool to enable sales team to function. Sales reps can do research on prospects, market, competitors etc. but their time shouldn’t be wasted in updating or personalizing the marketing collaterals. More so, when there is always a fully functional marketing department close by.

9) Shun the pitch, let them talk

Encourage your sales team to have a smooth conversation with the stakeholders on the other side. Don’t let the pitch come across as pitch. It should be effortless, confident, smoothly flowing two way conversation. This can be honed with practice, experience and thorough research. Sales pitch can put off the prospects and interest can fizzle out.

Hence, highly efficient sales teams know how to save their time and effort. It’s about concentrating on basic things and pushing the revenue up. John Richard II, the CEO of Venture Medical says “As a CEO of a company with a small sales staff, I recognize that the efficiency of our sales team is one of our top priorities.”

]]>http://www.mo-data.com/improve-sales-efficiency/feed/0How to Improve Sales Effectivenesshttp://www.mo-data.com/improve-sales-effectiveness/
http://www.mo-data.com/improve-sales-effectiveness/#respondWed, 18 Oct 2017 15:50:37 +0000http://www.mo-data.com/?p=3468Do you measure the effectiveness of your sales team on a regular basis? Do you know that sales effectiveness can be measured and improved? To a lot of salespeople, sales effectiveness might come across as a vague term often tossed in the sales meetings. As a sales leader, the best you can do is to … Continue reading How to Improve Sales Effectiveness→

]]>Do you measure the effectiveness of your sales team on a regular basis? Do you know that sales effectiveness can be measured and improved? To a lot of salespeople, sales effectiveness might come across as a vague term often tossed in the sales meetings. As a sales leader, the best you can do is to help the team understand the meaning of sales effectiveness and how it is related to the other elements of sales cycle such as sales productivity and sales efficiency.

Yes, educate the team not only about your product’s features but also about how to be effective in selling. It doesn’t matter if you have a nascent team or a cadre of experienced sales reps. It is important for your bottom line’s health that you reiterate and revise your sales processes and goals with the team.

Tips to improve sales effectiveness

To focus on conversion is just one aspect (a major one though) of sales. The following tips can improve team’s sales effectiveness with the ability to improve the conversion plus bottomline:

1.) Set the metrics to measure sales effectiveness

Carefully select those primary metrics that you will use month over month to measure your team’s effectiveness. These could be following:

Sales reps quotas. Are the quotas aligned to company’s sales target?

Conversion rate

Number of appointments won to demo the product

Length of the sales cycle from identifying to converting

Percentage of time spent in identifying prospects versus time spent in pitching to the prospects

Percentage of time spent in tailoring the marketing content

Number of times prospects don’t respond to your reps

Here are some of the metrics that shouldn’t be counted when setting up goals:

Number of calls made in a day

Number of emails sent in a day

These two metrics are misleading goals. Your rep might have completed the quota of making calls and sending emails without getting any appointment! Does that mean they are effective salespeople?

2.) Ensure the availability of right tailored content at the right time

Basically this means aligning your marketing team to sales so that they can fulfill the need of sales team. Your organization depends on the performance of sales department. Make other departments work around it so that sales can focus on pitching and closing the deals. You don’t want the sales reps to waste their time in editing the sales and marketing collateral. Of course, in B2B selling the marketing content, campaigns etc need to be personalized. Let the sales rep give their input to the marketing and let marketing do the editing bit. In Account Based Selling Model it wouldn’t be wrong if you keep one copywriter and a designer at an accessible range, for a group of sales reps, to just tailor the content.

Time you invest in listening to what your sales reps say to the decision makers in various accounts. The conversation needs to be monitored so that you could give constructive feedback to the reps. Say, your rep has sent mails to the prospects or tried to get in touch with them over the phone but all in vain.

If your team is confident that the identified prospects have a need then there is something else that needs to be fixed from your side to get stakeholders’ attention. This could be sales collaterals, which we have discussed in the previous point. Or it could be soft skill training plus the content of the conversation, which needs to be practiced over and over again.

As part of the sales training you can bring all the reps handling various accounts under one roof and let them share their stories on how they lost or won a particular deal.

4.) Feed data into the sales process

This takes us back to the first point where you set the metrics to measure the effectiveness. Now the insight from here needs to be fed back to improve and optimize the sales process. Once you tweak the process and see some result you can go back and revise the metrics again- add some more metrics to the list such as sales meetings per month, number of training sessions etc. With the insight from every metric it becomes easier to strengthen the sales process.

5.) Invest in right CRM to improve sales effectiveness

Gone are the days when sales reps used to maintain diaries and excel sheets. The market is flooded with plethora of CRM and other tools. Invest in the right kind of tool to assist your sales reps in moving fast towards conversion.

A sales team is the critical component of your organization and for the business to progress it is vital that the team is effective in selling. So, make sure that you give value and importance that sales team deserves and concentrate more on improving sales effectiveness rather than on conversion rate.

]]>http://www.mo-data.com/improve-sales-effectiveness/feed/0The Difference Between Productivity, Efficiency and Effectiveness in Saleshttp://www.mo-data.com/difference-productivity-efficiency-effectiveness-sales/
http://www.mo-data.com/difference-productivity-efficiency-effectiveness-sales/#respondWed, 11 Oct 2017 15:38:19 +0000http://www.mo-data.com/?p=3467You would have often heard your sales leaders asking you to be “more” productive, “more” efficient and “more” effective in selling! But how many times have you heard sales leaders explaining what these terms actually mean. Or how can we quantify this “more” in the realm of sales and sales cycle. Or are these just … Continue reading The Difference Between Productivity, Efficiency and Effectiveness in Sales→

]]>You would have often heard your sales leaders asking you to be “more” productive, “more” efficient and “more” effective in selling! But how many times have you heard sales leaders explaining what these terms actually mean. Or how can we quantify this “more” in the realm of sales and sales cycle. Or are these just the subjective terms? Is it like asking a graphic designer to be “more creative”?

Through this post we will let you know what your managers actually mean when they ask you to be “Productive”, “Efficient” and “Effective”. Intermixing the usage of these terms can be detrimental to performance of your sales team, especially in B2B landscape. We emphasize on B2B selling space because the sales teams here are under constant pressure to hit the target. Every single account won has a significant impact on the company’s revenue.

Hence, these terms are not mere jargons thrown at you to boost your confidence. Each of them can be measured and change the way your team functions.

What is Sales Productivity

Sales productivity gives you an idea of how your sales resources are getting utilized and if there is a possibility of increasing the revenue by shrinking the resources. For example, if in a month your net sales was worth $20,000 and your team comprised of 5 sales reps. So, each individual’s contribution on an average was $4,000 to the net sales but who was more productive. Based on this, you can justify if you need to increase or decrease the number of reps to be cost effective.

However, with the same number of resources you can try to increase the productivity by putting few things in order. This could be achieved through the following:

Align sales and marketing teams

Invest in training of sales reps

Automate redundant tasks

Keep refreshing the content

Invest in right CRM tools

Use data to get sales insights

What is Sales Effectiveness

Are you doing the right things to achieve your sales goal and targeted revenue? These right things, right tasks and right sales process fall under the sphere of sales effectiveness. If you adopted the account based selling model, it is important to sell effectively and smartly. Say, your sales reps are assigned with the task of sending N number of emails and making X number of calls and they are successfully able to meet this target. Does that mean they are effective? Unfortunately no. What matters is how many prospects during those touch points gave them appointment for demo. This is effectiveness and here are the checklists to help you improve your team’s effectiveness:

Availability of right tailored content at the right time

Consistently improving the sales process by setting different goals

Feeding data insights into the process

Providing training to strike effective conversation with stakeholders

What is Sales Efficiency

How much time and money were spent in achieving the set goals encopmasses sales efficiency. For example, how long does it take for your sales rep to get the appointment for the first demo and how many demos does it take to make a conversion. Efficiency is to make optimal utilization of resources. Hence, it directly leads to being effective.

Relationship between sales productivity, effectiveness and efficiency

Even though these three are completely different and shouldn’t be used interchangeably, all three are the important elements of sales cycle.

So if your sales team can attain more (by being effective) but with less effort (by being efficient) then it’s a sure shot formula for increasing productivity and getting better ROI.

]]>http://www.mo-data.com/difference-productivity-efficiency-effectiveness-sales/feed/0Soft Selling Techniques Top Salespeople Use to Improve Their Sales Close Ratiohttp://www.mo-data.com/soft-selling-techniques-top-salespeople-use-improve-sales-close-ratio/
http://www.mo-data.com/soft-selling-techniques-top-salespeople-use-improve-sales-close-ratio/#respondWed, 04 Oct 2017 23:01:10 +0000http://www.mo-data.com/?p=3376All of us have been subjected to cold calls, email campaigns and plethora of ad copies that internet is flooded with. Do you pay attention to the caller, if you get a call from a bank about their new loan scheme? Or to ad copies that are infused with call to action buttons like “Buy … Continue reading Soft Selling Techniques Top Salespeople Use to Improve Their Sales Close Ratio→

]]>All of us have been subjected to cold calls, email campaigns and plethora of ad copies that internet is flooded with. Do you pay attention to the caller, if you get a call from a bank about their new loan scheme? Or to ad copies that are infused with call to action buttons like “Buy Now” or “Don’t miss the deal”? The truth is that none of us like to be persuaded especially by organizations who are trying to sell its product or services.

The world of marketing and sales is evolving and with it selling techniques have changed too. More and more salespeople are choosing soft selling techniques over aggressive pitching or hard selling. There is a stark difference between the two.

We ourselves would have experienced hard selling as it is the most common form of selling technique employed by salespeople. Hard selling most of the times is frightfully direct, reminding you of the offer with urgency being focal point of the pitch. On the other side, soft selling is sophisticated way of selling with relationship building being the focus of conversation.

Elements of soft sales

Soft sales have following elements:

First of all, it is a conversation and not a sales pitch. A two way conversation between the salesperson and the prospect. The salesperson, instead of getting into the nitty gritty of features, deals, negotiations etc., allows the prospect to tell his/ her story.

Soft sales is not about cold calling or showing urgency. It is much more guaranteed and trusted way of selling because the salesperson comes with full preparation after doing research on prospects.

Relationship building with the prospect or customer is the essence of soft selling technique.

Generally organizations selling products or services with huge ticket size need to have soft sell approach. This is because they will be talking to the decision makers/ stakeholders/ business owners on prospects side.
So, we can say that soft selling is “we can help you” and not “hurry, our offer is expiring”.

Important Soft Selling Techniques

If you want to sound different in your selling techniques, it is advisable to adopt soft sell approach as soon as possible. Here is how you can use soft selling more often:

1) Focus on building relationship with existing and potential clients

Relationship building and management should be the priority of your salespeople when they are on the field. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that B2B businesses thrive on keeping up with prospects and forecasting existing customers needs. This is an important and desired soft selling technique where your salesperson’s interpersonal skills come into play.

2) Use your existing clients testimonials

Don’t just let the testimonials, positive feedback about your product and services sit in your website. Use them to get more clients on board. This can be achieved by reinforcing the testimonials, words of appreciation in ad copies, on billboards, blog posts, emails etc.

3) Give time to the prospect to think about your proposition

What this means is that just don’t bombard your prospect’s inbox with follow up emails or several calls post the demo. Whereas follow ups are important and you don’t want to lose your potential client to the competitors. So, you need to tread cautiously and do subtle follow ups.

4) Don’t stalk the prospect

Yes, technology has diffused rapidly and we get followed by banners of the sites that we visited, cold calls and emails. Everyone who is on the sales side is trying to gain attention from every possible nook and corner. But if you want to be taken seriously by your prospects don’t stalk them. Give them space and time. How? This is answered in the next point.

5) Use technology to automate and integrate

Instead of cold calling and sending persuasive emails, use customer engagement platform to improve communication strategies. These platforms can help you set some rules before a relevant email is triggered at various touch points.

6) Set the stage to tell the story

This can be easily done by inviting both your prospects and existing customers for conferences and seminars hosted by your organization. Give opportunity to your existing customer to speak on your behalf. Yes, be the showman.

7) Sell through stories and case studies

Train your salespeople who are going to be the face of your product and organization to be storytellers. This is another soft selling technique where the prospect is gently walked through their own needs. You can always talk how the prospect’s competitors gained big chunk of market share after investing in your product/ service.

8) Invest resources in doing research

This is called preparing before shaking hands with the prospects. Good research on your prospect will help you control the conversation. This doesn’t mean that you will not let the prospect talk. Rather allow the prospect talk first and once they finish you can mildly drive the conversation. This is what soft selling is, after all! Apart from this through research you yourself will get convinced why the target needs your product or service.

Hence, soft selling is more calculative and assured way of selling. We say calculative and assured because substantial time and resources are spent in doing research. Based on this persona is developed, case studies, personalized content, emailers are designed to get the first appointment to demo.

]]>http://www.mo-data.com/soft-selling-techniques-top-salespeople-use-improve-sales-close-ratio/feed/0Sales Meeting Ideas to Inspire and Motivate Your Sales Teamhttp://www.mo-data.com/sales-meeting-ideas-inspire-motivate-sales-team/
http://www.mo-data.com/sales-meeting-ideas-inspire-motivate-sales-team/#respondWed, 27 Sep 2017 22:58:47 +0000http://www.mo-data.com/?p=3374“Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower Motivation goes a long way towards producing good sales figures. The more motivated your sales team is, the more successfully they will sell. Like everything else, motivation has to be … Continue reading Sales Meeting Ideas to Inspire and Motivate Your Sales Team→

“Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.”

– Dwight D. Eisenhower

Motivation goes a long way towards producing good sales figures. The more motivated your sales team is, the more successfully they will sell. Like everything else, motivation has to be maintained if you want to bear its fruit. Having an unmotivated team can be a problem, but every manager can learn how to motivate the sales team better. They can solve this problem and guide the team towards achieving the quarterly targets. We’ve come up with some sales meeting ideas to help with this process.

1) Positive reinforcement

All too often, sales managers focus on the negative. What went wrong, who screwed up, who didn’t achieve their targets. This is something they talk about a lot. However, this demotivates the team. All the focus on the negative creates the impression this
is the only thing going on.

Instead of focusing solely on the negative, a good idea would be to spruce up your sales meeting with something positive. Be conscious about the positive work your team is doing. Praise them for their success. This goes a long way toward motivating them. We all want to avoid scolding, but we all appreciate praise. What would you prefer – leading a team working towards avoiding something or towards achieving something? The latter is a lot more successful.

Pay attention to what your team is doing. Start your meetings by praising them for their success. Use your own observations, coworkers impressions, or even client testimony. Praising the whole team will promote teamwork in the future.

2) Team involvement

Just because you’re leading them, doesn’t mean you should do all the work. Your team can also help create a supportive atmosphere, where individual members are appreciated. Hearing praise from the sales manager is one thing, but hearing praise from a peer is another thing altogether. Encourage them to do so.

As a sales manager, you should be giving motivational sales meeting ideas. People don’t always find the right words to express themselves. Guide them through the process and lead them by example. Ask your team if they have stories about coworkers who have helped them get the job done. The focus should be on people in the room, but people outside of it should also be commended. Inspire this behaviour and you’ll see the inter-team dynamics change for the better.

3) Individual approach

Letting the team know they’re doing a good job is a fantastic way to motivate them. Yet you shouldn’t forget about personal achievements. It’s a good thing for people to feel like they are a part of something bigger than they are. At the same time, most people don’t like to get the impression they’re being de-personified. It’s a delicate balance you need to achieve.

Pointing out personal achievements is a great way motivate your sales team. This way you can easily show them what type of behaviour you’re looking for. Keep in mind not everybody likes to be in the spotlight. This might have the opposite effect for people who are shy. Make sure you use this tactic wisely and with the right people lest it backfires.

4) Keep them in the loop

How can your team be motivated if they don’t know what’s going on? Many sales managers make the crucial mistakes of not keeping their team in the loop. This means the sales team is not aware of where they’re going. Setting up a few targets is not enough. You need to have a clear vision of how they’re going to be achieved. The team needs to be familiar with your vision.

Be clear about what you want and how you want to achieve it. This will increase the likelihood of success. Your team will feel involved in the process. They will be a lot more motivated because of their involvement. It’s no longer your vision. It’s theirs, too.

5) Dynamic approach to meetings

If you do the same thing over and over again, it will get boring. Even if you have good intentions, your team will feel you’re just forcing things. Change things up a bit. Use a different time or setting. Move the furniture around. Allow a different team member to lead it every week. All of this will make for a different sales meeting each time.

Your team will see you’re trying to keep things fresh. They will also realize how much you’re involving them in the process. Once more, they will feel like a part of the big picture. This will go a long way towards motivating them.

6) Inside information

Sales managers always have access to more information than their teams. This is the natural order of things. However, team members often feel neglected because of this. It makes them feel uncertain of what’s going on behind the curtain. Dispel their doubts by giving them more information when you can. If you want a motivated team, tell them what’s happening in the kitchen, even if it doesn’t concern them directly.

7) End on a high note

End your meetings with an inspirational quote or video. This will allow you to finish on a high note and leave a motivating impression from the meeting. The Internet is full of motivational materials from the best writers and speakers, so this shouldn’t be too difficult. Yet, it will do a lot for motivating your team.

It’s important to keep your team motivated if you want them to be efficient. Show them the behaviors you’re looking for and lead by example. Use the ideas we’ve shown you and you’ll see a positive change in no time.